Stack Overflow Q&A community as a platform for professional development in programming

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to investigate the usage of the Stack Overflow as an informal learning method for expertise development. Theory: Socially Situated Learning and Communities of Practice by Jane Lave and Etienne Wenger. Method: The data used for analysis in this study is the Stack Overflow website and the same was studied from the Developer Survey provided by Stack Overflow. Results: The results indicated overall satisfaction by participants as a result of their respective participation in the community. Besides, the analysis reported that skills and experience are the two most important concepts in terms of expertise development. Consequently, it was indicated that the more experienced users are, the more active they become in delivering knowledge and supporting newcomers in the community. However, the majority of the participants were found to be the receivers of knowledge. The result stressed out that the majority of participants would recommend the Stack Overflow as a Q&A community for software developers to others who are interested in developing their programming skills